Positive strides: WIPR's diversity and inclusion survey

Earlier this year, WIPR undertook a global survey to learn more about your thoughts and experiences of diversity in the legal profession. While our inaugural survey in 2019 mainly focused on gender diversity, this year we broadened the focus to include all kinds of diversity and inclusion (D&I) issues for a fuller picture. The results were, once again, sobering.

As in our first survey, the majority of our respondents were women, with men and ‘other’ making up 20% and 5%, respectively. The majority (70%) of respondents came from private practice, while in-house, service providers, IP offices and others made up the rest of the cohort, and a third of respondents consider themselves to be part of a minority.

Personal stories and accountable leaders

Approximately three-quarters of respondents believe that D&I is a stated value for their organisation.

D&I seems to be more of a priority for those in private practice, with 82% believing it’s a priority for their organisation, compared with 70% of those in other organisations.

"It’s important for an organisation to have diversity champions who strongly believe in making changes." Véronique Durand-Rettally, Baker McKenzie

These percentages are slightly lower than the amount of people who believe that D&I is either extremely important or very important to improving a company’s success (89%). And, given the sheer number of studies which show that diversity improves innovation and financial performance, it’s no surprise that only 3% of respondents feel that D&I is not very or not at all important.

The bad news is that the percentage of firms with a D&I policy did not change year on year, with 65% of respondents stating that their companies had such a policy in both this year’s survey and last year’s. Private practice respondents pushed up the results, with 67% stating that their firm has a policy.

But there’s worse news: our survey found that only three-quarters believe their senior management team was committed to D&I.

Brian Winterfeldt, principal of Winterfeldt IP Group, says: “It is very unfortunate that although we are in the year 2020, a quarter of survey respondents believe their senior management team is not demonstrably committed to D&I.”

It’s crucial for a diverse and inclusive culture to come from the top and be reinforced at every step of the way. Otherwise, staff can end up feeling like one respondent, who warns: “The initiatives feel like public-facing statements not internal goals.”

Véronique Durand-Rettally, counsel at Baker McKenzie in Mexico, adds that having accountable leaders is of the utmost importance when you’re looking to develop better D&I programmes.

“It’s important for an organisation to have diversity champions who strongly believe in making changes and involve leadership to create a diverse and inclusive workplace,” she says. “But for any policy and initiative to be successful, the commitment of everyone, especially those at a decision-making level, is crucial.”

To get more members of senior management engaged with these important efforts, Winterfeldt suggests some effective approaches.

First, client pressure and peer pressure can be very useful, he says, adding that “even those who are not committed to D&I because it is the right thing to do, ethically speaking, can be persuaded that there is a significant business case for an investment in D&I”.

"We need to discuss our own programming as to how we view and judge others based on societal norms,  going to the root causes of a lack of diversity." Mercedes Meyer, Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath

In recent years, a series of corporates have introduced diversity demands on outside counsel, with Intel announcing that it would “not retain or use outside law firms in the US that are average or below average on diversity”.

“Law firms whose clients require a demonstration of a D&I commitment are more likely to offer diverse client service teams, and corporate organisations may also be accountable to their own customers and shareholders who expect progress in this area,” adds Winterfeldt.

He believes that leadership team members who are not diverse may simply not be thinking about D&I if it hasn’t been relevant to their own career path and advancement trajectory.

According to our survey, 96% of respondents were aware of women in senior positions in their organisations. But, those with other diverse characteristics were less visible. Only 50% of respondents were aware of senior people from an ethnic minority, and approximately 42% of respondents knew of an LGBTQ+ person on the senior team.

The numbers are much lower when you look at people with a disability and those from a lower socioeconomic background, with approximately 15% and 26%, respectively.

“I have found that personal stories resonate with senior professionals whose own life experiences have not been impacted by D&I,” adds Winterfeldt.

“Once these professionals hear from diverse personnel who have either been helped by D&I efforts, or hindered by a lack of them, they may be open to developing more inclusive practices and policies.”

Root causes

Mercedes Meyer, partner at Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath in the US, warns that accountability is currently failing. She believes that firms and in-house teams need to hold groups accountable for putting people on their teams and ensure they are not using a team of people of only one gender or one ethnic group.

While Meyer believes that many people are committed to improving D&I, she cautions that some are not looking at and addressing the underlying root causes of a lack of diversity.

“We need to discuss our own programming as to how we view and judge others based on societal norms, going to the root causes of a lack of diversity,” she says. Unconscious bias training is just one of many options that IP firms are undertaking to push D&I efforts.

“You can be committed, but if you don’t undertake actions, then the commitment is without impact,” Meyer adds.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents say their company has mentoring and leadership development programmes, while more than half have set up a diversity and/or inclusion committee. But other initiatives such as diversity training and affinity networks lag behind, with 42% and 40%, respectively.

"Law firms whose clients require a demonstration of a D&I commitment are more likely to offer diverse client service teams." Brian Winterfeldt, Winterfeldt IP Group

A variety of initiatives can be successful, says Winterfeldt, but it’s vital for the senior personnel who are developing and promoting these initiatives to be responsive to feedback from members of the organisation at all levels.

“For example, D&I training can be very well done and create a true sense of inclusion and community among an organisation’s workforce,” he explains.

“However, if training is mandatory but comes across as perfunctory, it can have the opposite impact and make employees feel as if management is ‘phoning it in’, so to speak, especially if the employees continue to observe overt discrimination or a perceived lack of opportunities for diverse personnel.”

Fighting the system

Even though some IP organisations are undertaking exemplary D&I work, it’s a sad picture for the legal profession as a whole—only half of our respondents believe that the profession is doing well in this respect.

“The legal profession talks a good talk but fails on the evidence,” claims one respondent.